Experiment of Hall thruster plume effects on different ground experimental conditions

Reducing the influence of back-sputtering effect can effectively improve the accuracy of the measurement of the Hall thruster plume effect. Quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) was used to measure the deposition and sputtering distribution of HET-40 thruster plume on two different experimental conditions: case 1, using liquid nitrogen heat sinks and case 2, without using liquid nitrogen heat sinks. Meanwhile, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) was used to analyze the composition of the QCM surface after two experiments. The results of the two experiments showed that the sputtering rate under the condition of case 1 was slightly higher than case 2. Especially within the range of 90° to 110° relative to the thruster axis, case 1 experiment result showed sputtering effect, while case 2 experiment showed deposition effect. Through analysis of the experimental results, it can be found that using liquid nitrogen heat sink to reduce the temperature of the inner wall surface of vacuum chamber can effectively adsorb the particles sputtered by the plume and reduce the concentration of back-sputtering particles, leading to the above phenomenon.